In My Need

In the last 23 days of this new year, I have been hit by something that I had been trying to hide from myself for a long time. 

It came when I was pleading with God for life, while trying to prepare for a prayer meeting the next morning. I forget under what context the thoughts came, but all of a sudden, I realized:

I had been trying to achieve spirituality in my life so that I could eventually get to a place where I didn't need Him anymore. 

I long for neatness. Correctness. For not having crayons stray from the lines of the colouring book. Yet, in my spiritual life, I was trying to achieve the same thing. I longed for neatness. For orderly, scheduled God-things, and I had failed to work out my head knowledge that:

The more I know Him, the more I know I need Him.

I guess it can all be boiled down to my need for control. And yet, what state did He find me in? It sure wasn't in control of my destiny: "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners." (Romans 5:6)

The biggest area of my life that this has been surfacing in has been in my prayer life. I have been privileged this year to be in a position of some leadership in terms of prayer. As is my custom, as soon as I am allowed to control something... I. control. it. And it was frustrating me to no end. Why wouldn't this thing called prayer just fit into my nice, neat framework of life? Why was it such a big struggle? God, wasn't I asked to do this because somehow I was right? 

What if my rightness, was my "wrong-ness." 

All year I have been saying that this prayer ministry has been teaching me that I am unable, but those were just words that I was saying. I didn't understand them. They were the right things to say. 

Then again, today He hit me with something along the same lines as I was reading from Paul E. Miller's A Praying Life, that I have been reading through with my mentee. 

You don't need self-discipline to pray continuously; you just need to be poor in spirit. {pg. 66}

Prayer is not neat. It is not (necessarily) 20 minutes set aside to pray for missionaries and fellow students. It is a desperate gasping of the soul, "I need You - oh, I need You!" If I approach God thinking that I have anything to bring, any beauty of my own, any strength of my own mind, will, spirit or body, then I am absolutely fooling myself. 

A praying life isn't simply a morning prayer time; it is about slipping into prayer at odd hours of the day, not because we are disciplined but because we are in touch with our own poverty of spirit, realizing that we can't even walk through a mall or our neighborhood without the help of the Spirit of Jesus. {pg. 68}

My poorness may be the richest thing that I have to gain. 

Making Me Holy

On a Monday morning, some truths need to be repeated as guilt can wash in like a flood.

"You slept through your alarm and didn't do your devotions? Oh, wait. You didn't even set your alarm. What kind of person are you?"

"You do this every weekend. Devotions seems to start and end with weekdays. Not even on Sunday!"

"You said you'd do better this time, well, you didn't."

And the voices go on and on... but only if I let them. Because they are not truth, they are not who He is.

I can so easily transpose human emotion onto a God who never changes. I can imagine Him miffed by my unconcern toward spending time with Him or my blatant refusal of His wishes. Yes, I'm sure He is disappointed. But miffed, holding back on me and keeping His presence from me so I feel His distance even as I was distant from Him before?

No. He is not a vengeful God towards His children.

And there's a line that goes through my head. It's from a song one of the students wrote last year:

You make me holy. You make me holy. You make me holy, You make me holy.

Truth that resounds.

You see, I can so easily forget what Hebrews 12:12 is really trying to say:

We do this [running with endurance] by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. (Hebrews 12:2a)

He initiated. And He perfects. My deeds were not what got me into the position of a highly favoured child of God. And they won't get me out of it either. Which is not a license for sinning more, but what enables me to look beyond my failures of a weekend and to know that my God is ready and waiting to perfect my faith as I come to Him.

He makes me holy. Hallelujah!

Exactly What I Need

{I started this one in the summer, but I never finished it, so here you go!}
A friend recently posted this song on FB:

Stop.

Actually listen to it.

I know, I know...  I'm creepy reading your mind like that, huh?

Do it.

The phrase that really stuck out to me was "I am desperate for a desperate heart."

That phrase encompasses so much of what I feel everyday about God and my relationship with Him. It was the same when I was reading through A.W. Tozer's book, The Pursuit of God. And I wrote a *post* about it back during January.

This song hits the same notes of my heart's cry that was expressed in that post as well. I am absolutely nothing by myself, a desert soul. Gasping, searching for just a single drop of water. And I long to long to long to long for Him.

Sometimes there are days when that's all I feel, the faintest glimmer of longing, and other days when it is so much that it drives me to my knees.

And this should be my heart's cry, whether in days or plenty or in days of drought. It's so easy when things are going well, to not think about how He's the One that brought it, and then when He brings days of drought, I so easily find myself asking, "What did I do wrong? Why can't I stay up in that nice place?"

I think He often brings me to that place of drought, to bring me to my knees. To make me realize just how much I need Him, with disregard to everything else. Ever, always, only.

May I have a desert soul, satisfied with what He is, but always craving to know more.

Irresistible

Great article that was given to us in class one day. Made me stop and think about what things I perceive in my desire to approach Him and the things that keep me back:

Christianity is not so much about you desiring God as it is about God desiring you. I wonder if you believe that.

We are all about desiring God at Desiring God. We believe with all our hearts that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

But the truth is that we will not desire God if we don’t believe that really God desires us. If God is a powerful person who in reality cares little or nothing about us, we may have a fear-based respect for him, but we will not love him. We will certainly not be satisfied in him. We will keep our distance from him and find our true satisfaction elsewhere.

This is, in fact, why many of us feel distant from God. We think he’s distant from us, but really we are keeping our distance from him. We don’t desire God because we believe things about him that are wrong. And because of that we have grown cynical, disillusioned, and have serial spiritual adulterous affairs with idols in our lives.

And if this describes you, you’re listening to what your perception says about God and not what God says about God. And what you need right now is to come to terms with the truth that “Jesus Christ desires to be with you a thousand times more than you desire to be with him.” He wants you! You need to know that the Christian God is a desiring God.

Listen to the message that pastor R W Glenn delivered at our National Conference six weeks ago. In this message, he beautifully unpacks this truth from Hosea chapter 7. Please listen to it. It’s 45 minutes that really may change your life. It may help you understand why you struggle so much to desire God and it may open up a new world of worship for you. Here’s a taste:

If God says that he wants you (and wants all of you) warts and all, he wants you. Everything about you – all the stuff you are ashamed of, all the stuff you hate about yourself, all your failures, all the weaknesses, all your filthiness and all your idolatry, all your unbelief — God wants you still. Stop believing yourself and believe him instead. He’s got a fix on reality. And the reality is that the Lord loves you with all he is.

Jesus so loved you and desired you that while you were still a sinner he died for you (Romans 5:8). And if you love him at all it is because he first loved you (1 John 4:19). Delve into that glorious mystery! Don’t remain distant!

It may be that before you can focus on desiring God, you need to focus on the desiring God. When you really know the desiring God, you’ll find him irresistible.

{copied from http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/god-desires-you-far-more-than-you-desire-him}

More than My Sin

So often in this day-to-day routine that we label as life at Millar, I can get lost. Lost in the reality of what seeking Him means when I go to classes all morning relating to Him and am involved in prayer meetings and mentoring and everything else.

But it seems like everyday, He comes with those little things that speak gently and quietly, those precious words:

"I love you, Christy."

And one of those came through our discussion about  David's sin with Bathsheba in Historical Book's class.

I've never noticed before, but all of David's really big, really disastrous sins all occur after ch. 7 of 2 Samuel. In this chapter, God speaks of His covenant with David, and there's just an amazing record of all that He has done to bring David to the place that he is today.

And it's just four chapters later, that we read about David's sin with Bathsheba. And I think that's on purpose...

The fact is, David's sin and emotions were never, could never, be bigger than God's covenant. My sin does not annul God's covenant with me.

It almost comes from a selfish perspective, I guess, to boast that my sin is so great that it overwhelms His grace and His promise. It never could.

I so often fall into the trap of thinking that somehow my deeds are what keep me in His love. But they weren't what got me there, and they aren't enough to take me out.

"The gospel tells us the determining factor in my relationship with God is Jesus' work for us, not our work for him; his performance for us, not our performance for him; his obedience for us, not our obedience. The Gospel is the good news that God doesn't relate to us based on our feats for Jesus but Jesus feats for us. The gospel tells us that God's acceptance of us is not gained by our success or forfeited by our failures - because it's not about us!"

(Tullian Tchividjian)

It's not about me. 

David did not get to the throne by his own power, and he did not keep the throne by his own power. It was God 100% of the way. It wasn't David with a bit of  God's help, or even David with a lot of God's help - it was GOD. 

As humans, we overestimate our ability to help God, when really, all we are is dust:

"A voice says, "Cry!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when teh breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever." (Isaiah 40:6-8, ESV)

My salvation? It's none of what I've done. In fact, the only thing I've ever contributed to my salvation is my sin. So there is no way, that either my success or my failures will influence whether God accepts me or not. 

What a lovely truth!